The Summit: How Triumph Turned To Tragedy On K2's Deadliest Days

glacier

Prologue

May 2008

The hardy, weather-beaten farmers from the foothills of the Karakorum mountains make their way to the small village of Askole in one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of northern Pakistan. Some walk for hours along crumbling roads and dirt tracks which wind their way through the parched and barren terrain deep in Asia’s most mountainous region.

The men, mostly middle-aged but some not much older than teenagers, descend from their farms and homesteads around Askole in search of work. The climbing season is about to get under way and the dusty and featureless single storey outpost is preparing to host a diverse assortment of international climbers in search of adventure on the ever-alluring mountains in the region.

Despite its remoteness, this part of northern Pakistan, situated along the border with China, has attracted explorers and thrill-seekers to the challenges of high-altitude adventure for over 100 years. Askole comes to life with the injection of people and revenue which the annual climbing season brings; the village is the climbers’ final encounter with civilisation before several weeks, or maybe months, on the mountains beyond.

To launch their summit bids, the expeditions require hundreds of porters to ferry heavy loads of hiking gear, tents, clothing, foodstuffs and communications equipment to camps in the glacial valleys above, places far beyond the access of any motorised vehicle. For that service, the expedition members pay well, often enough to match several months of the regular earnings of their newly-hired staff. The expeditions’ sirdars, the head guides responsible for mobilising and organising the porters, put the word about if any particularly large expeditions are due to arrive, news of additional short-term employment prospects rippling around the region.

As well as older men looking to supplement the meagre incomes they derive from farming in Askole’s hinterland, younger porters, even a few college students, assemble, partly out of excitement at the prospect of a few weeks on the mountains and partly to earn some hard cash. The work is quite profitable by local economic standards. The sirdar negotiates remuneration for the porters, a daily rate of around $10, payable on arrival at Base Camp.

When all the hiring is done, rates agreed and cargo arranged, the porters wait in line, ready to tether to their backs and the tops of their heads boxes and containers full of high-tech clothing, satellite technology and new-fangled mountaineering gadgets, and carry them across the glaciers thousands of metres above.

The porters’ routine has been a mainstay of the climbing season in the Gilgit Baltistan district of Pakistan ever since outsiders first came to explore and survey the region, fascinated by the vast expanse of soaring mountains and gigantic glaciers which run from the Karakorum on the China-Pakistan border south eastwards to the Himalaya which separate China from India.

The peaks form a vast phalanx of mountains, born millennia earlier when the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates ploughed into each other, forcing volcanic ash and rock skyward, and forming a jagged, inhospitable and remote landscape of peaks and valleys. Historically part of the Silk Road trading route between Europe and Asia, the advent of colonialism and the expansion of the British Empire brought an increased commercial and geographical interest in the region from the West.

It wasn’t until 1856 and the arrival of a British army lieutenant-colonel, Thomas Montgomerie, that the full breadth and dimensions of the mountain ranges in the region came to be known. As part of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India, Montgomerie took up a position on the summit of Haramukh in northern India, 200 kilometres to the south of the Karakorum range. From there, and with the aid of an angle-measuring theodolite, he charted and calculated the heights of the array of peaks along the horizon.

Thirty-two summits were visible, two of which jutted way above their peers. He sketched what he saw in his notebook. A simple nomenclature had to be found; Montgomerie decided he would call each of the peaks ’K — shorthand for Karakorum — and then append a number to every one of the 32. And so was born the name of the world’s second highest mountain, K2. Kl soon came to be known by its local name, Masherbrum, but the name given to the higher peak stuck.

For a brief period in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, the name Mount Godwin-Austen was used to refer to K2; the English topographer, Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen, is credited with being the first westerner, in 1861, to see the mountain close up from the top of the glacier which weaves its way towards K2’s flanks on the Pakistani side. Godwin-Austen, instead, lent his name to the glacier on which he stood.

The Godwin-Austen glacier forms a corridor towards the peak from the south where it intersects with the massive Baltoro glacier, which, in turn, runs over 65 kilometres southwest towards Askole and civilisation. Chogori, a name used locally for the soaring peak, and deriving from the Balti words chhogo (big) and ri (mountain), never caught on. Montgomerie’s original classification endured, and of his 32 ‘Ks’ only ‘K2’ is still commonly used.

Climbers spend their last night in pre-mountain society in their tents in Askole, having made the long journey from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, where permits are secured and other paperwork is completed before the 750-kilometre journey along the Karakorum Highway to the busy northern city of Skardu. The highway is the highest paved road in the world and is notoriously dangerous, often blocked by monsoon downpours and heavy snowfall. From Skardu, a heavily potholed and poorly maintained mountain road brings the expeditions to Askole.

Some of the expeditions have high-altitude workers travelling with them; men who will work as guides and helpers until the climbers leave the mountain. They assist in fixing ropes, carrying oxygen and other supplies, and leading their clients towards the summit. A handful are Sherpas from Nepal, thousands of kilometres away in the Himalaya, but most are from northern Pakistan and are generally hired based on their experience of the Karakorum mountains and their understanding and knowledge of high-altitude climbing.

Before the porters receive their allocation, the climbers check and re-check the inventory of their supplies, all bearing detailed labels to ensure foodstuffs rationed for the following two-month period are not dipped into any sooner than they should be. A precise catalogue of everything — from socks to spices, gas stoves to crampons, satellite phones to anti-inflammatory drugs —will have been calculated and formulated months before, based on a detailed daily allowance of items for the journey ahead.

As night falls, a sense of anticipation builds; tomorrow the climbers will begin the trek towards Base Camp where the expedition will begin in earnest, years of preparation and logistical planning finally realised. Ambition battles with fear, excitement with trepidation as a proper night’s sleep proves elusive. The first group of porters will be gone by dawn to prepare camps and meals before the visitors even emerge from their tents.

As the climbers begin the ascent towards the icy moraine of the Baltoro glacier, they follow in the footsteps of the countless expeditions that have encroached upon the pristine landscape for over a century, each with varying degrees of success. One of the earliest expeditions was led by Aleister Crowley, the controversial English mystic, occultist, self-styled prophet and founder of the religious philosophy of Thelema.

With his friend, Oscar Eckenstein, Crowley made five failed summit bids in the space of nine weeks in the summer of 1902.¹ On the higher slopes, the expedition descended into near farce; at one point, a hypoxic and delirious Crowley — ’one of the strangest men ever to become a mountaineer’²— threatened a team-mate with a gun.

Seven years later, it fell to an equally flamboyant man, the Duke of the Abruzzi — grandson of Italy’s first king — to attempt K2’s summit. Fresh from expeditions to the Arctic and several mountains across the world, the renowned explorer arrived via the Baltoro glacier with a brass bed, camel hair-lined sleeping bags and other trappings of royalty. Despite being well resourced and having the best mountaineering equipment available, the duke and his team ascended no higher than 6,100 metres.

His hopes of a new high-altitude record were dashed but he later lent his name to the southeast ridge via which he attempted the summit, a name still in use today. The duke’s expedition also gave the world some of the most iconic images ever taken of the mountain, which were captured by Vittorio Sella, the noted high-altitude photographer.

The elusive and mysterious K2 quickly captured the imagination of the small international mountaineering fraternity at a time when the conquest of mountains was a badge of glory, not just for climbers, but also for the countries from which they came. An American-led expedition in 1939 saw its leader, the well-known socialite, Dudley Wolfe, perish after several days stranded at the higher camps. Three Sherpas died in an attempt to rescue him, the first recorded fatalities on K2.

After a decline in the number of expeditions to the mountain during the second World War and in its immediate aftermath, summit success finally came to a meticulously prepared Italian expedition in 1954. Just a year after Everest had been scaled by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, the 40-year-old Italian, Lino Lacadelli, and his fellow countryman, 29-year-old Achille Compagnoni, stood together at 8,611 metres on the snow-capped apex on the evening of 31 July. Nobody would set foot on the summit for another 23 years.³

The widely-celebrated Italian summit success was tinged with controversy, however, and their achievement was sullied by accusation and counter-accusation of selfishness and lies. Another member of the expedition, Walter Bonatti, had climbed towards Lacadelli and Compagnoni with supplementary oxygen to improve their prospects of success. Bonatti later accused Compagnoni of moving the highest camp, Camp Nine, to a location other than that agreed, forcing him and a Hunza porter, Amir Mahdi, to bivouac in the open air overnight.

The summiteers later retrieved the oxygen and Bonatti and Mahdi descended to a lower camp. Bonatti always held that Compagnoni didn’t want him to share in the summiteers’ success. Though Bonatti was considered fitter than Compagnoni, and had a real prospect of summiting, the latter was the favoured protégé of the team leader, Ardito Desio

Bonatti’s claims were largely written out of the official record of events although he eventually cleared his name in the Italian courts. However, there was never any reconciliation between him and the summiteers.⁴ Half a century later, the Italian Alpine Club publicly acknowledged Bonatti as integral to the 1954 summit success.

The mountain continued to appeal to the more courageous and adventurous. In 1979, the South Tyrolean Italian climber, Reinhold Messner, climbed K2 along a route on the south face which he dubbed ’The Magic Line’. This success contributed to his record achievement of becoming the first person in the world to have climbed every one of the world’s 14 peaks above 8,000 metres, known as the 8,000ers in the mountaineering fraternity.

It was 1986 before a woman set foot on the summit. Wanda Rutkiewicz, from Poland, saw her achievement overshadowed, however, by the deaths of two of her climbing partners, the French husband and wife, Maurice and Liliane Barrard, who died in a suspected icefall below the summit. That same climbing season became known as K2’s ’Black Summer’ when a total of 13 climbers perished in different accidents between June and August. As the number of expeditions arriving to K2 rose in the 1980s and 1990s, so, too, did the number of fatalities on what was rapidly becoming known as the ’Killer Mountain’.⁵

Unlike Everest and many other iconic peaks in the Himalaya and the Karakorum, K2 is relatively inaccessible, one of the many reasons it is climbed less often and has never gained the popularity and allure of its peers. Ahead of all climbers leaving Askole is a four- to seven-day trek to the foot of the mountain. Transporting tons of equipment across the Baltoro glacier, the mammoth ice field that leads almost all the way to the base of the mountain, is laborious, physically demanding and expensive.

The party of climbers and porters — up to 20 porters are required for every climber — move from an altitude of 2,500 metres to 5,000 metres over the course of the trek, traversing ice fields, gushing streams and rubble-strewn terrain. The neighbouring ice tributaries feed into the Baltoro — one of the longest glaciers outside the polar regions and two kilometres wide in places — giving an aerial view resembling the fronds of seaweed splayed out across the valley.

As the human caravan weaves its way up the glacial valley, the multitude of peaks which make up the Karakorum range comes into view, reminding the adventurers that each step is taking them closer to the mountain they have been thinking and dreaming about for years.

The Karakorum region is home to some of the most celebrated mountains in the world, each peak offering a different experience, its own tests and dangers and a distinctive and unique adrenalin rush. Gasherbrum I, II, III and IV, Masherbrum (Kl) and Broad Peak (K3), along with an adventure park of climbing walls and cliffs of black granite, including the landmark Trango Towers, present a veritable smorgasbord of some of the most exhilarating and best-known climbing challenges in the world.

But just one of the star attractions occupies the concentration of the chain snaking its way across the footbridges, boulders and snow: appropriately, K2 - dwarfing its neighbours — is the final destination on the route, the majestic terminus at the end of the rugged glacier.

The climbers come from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, from different socio-economic groups and professions; they speak different languages and have different belief systems and approaches. They also have varying levels of experience and proficiency. Each will have left behind a family — parents, partners, perhaps a husband or wife, or young children — in their quest to explore not just some of the world’s most majestic and dangerous places, but also to explore the limits of their physical and psychological capacities.

But the disparate group shares one thing in common — a passion for adventure, allied to a desire to achieve something few people on the planet ever will — overcoming the challenge of some of the most hostile but beautiful natural features in the world: its highest mountains.

For some, getting to Base Camp, or maybe one of the higher camps on the mountain, will be their ’summit’; for others, nothing less than the summit itself will suffice. But, for all, their love of climbing, being on the mountains and embracing the risks that presents, is the common bond they share, the stresses and strains of home, work and family fading with each step that takes them higher into the icy wilderness.

Despite the withdrawal of daily comforts and luxuries, the climbers begin to feel utterly alive, every sense more receptive and responsive to their surroundings. Whatever happens on this adventure, a new personal story is being written, one with which they will regale family and friends for years to come. Hope and fear battle for supremacy inside them as they prepare to test the limits of their abilities and defy their own mortality.

Before the 8,611-metre K2 is unveiled in all its glory, the climbers must continue their trek alongside the ghosts of Crowley, the Duke of the Abruzzi and Lacadelli. Up to eight hours of hiking each day takes its toll but they know that every kilometre brings them closer to the fitness levels which are required to mount a serious summit bid.

The low-altitude porters (LAPs) run with their cargo across parts of the more dangerous terrain, dodging and ducking beneath rock faces which are prone to shunting stones and boulders towards the ground at speed. By night, they rest in bivouac-style shelters while the climbers sleep in their expensive, high-quality tents.

For the entire footslog across the Baltoro, the climbers’ target remains out of sight, hidden behind the gigantic peaks that stand sentry around it. It is not until they reach Concordia, the confluence of the Baltoro glacier and the much shorter Godwin-Austen glacier, that the expedition members get a first full glimpse of the imposing peak which has been in their thoughts and minds for years on end.

Though the mountain is still up to a day’s walk away, this is a moment to pause in awe, to holler in relief at having come this far, to reach for a camera in a rucksack, to grapple with the extent of the mammoth task ahead. Reinhold Messner dubbed K2 ‘the most beautiful of all the high peaks’.⁶ Most of his contemporaries would agree. Despite the close proximity of its peers, the almost-perfectly symmetrical diamond-shaped pinnacle stands out from the crowd, a pyramidal rock reaching upwards towards the heavens and resting imperially on the glacial plains below.

The first sighting of K2 also forces the climbers to confront another reality - its deadly reputation and status as the world’s most dangerous peak. Names like ‘Killer Mountain’ and ‘Savage Mountain’, which locals sometimes dismiss as unjustified and unfair, have a certain ring of truth, at least when the statistics are examined.

Before the climbing season of 2008, just 278 people had successfully scaled K2, 66 of whom had died in the attempt — a fatality rate of 24 per cent. Out of every four climbers attempting the mountain, one will not come home. Thus, the mantra of ‘one in four’ has become a familiar refrain for those warning of the dangers of the world’s second highest peak.

In stark comparison, one in 11 of those trying to scale Everest had lost their lives by 2008.⁷ The fatality rate on Annapurna (8,091 metres) in Nepal — at one in three — was higher in the same period, but it has fallen steadily in recent years while K2’s has remained stubbornly high. In many climbing seasons K2 can go unclimbed; even in a busy season it is often just a handful of climbers who make it to the top. In 2006, while hundreds successfully scaled Everest, just four people summited K2.

Less commercialised than Everest and despite its seniority in the pecking order of mountains, K2 has never lured climbers like its taller sister; its unpopularity, relative to its only superior, is reflected in the cost of the permit required to travel there. A Pakistani ministry of tourism permit for K2 in 2008 cost $10,000 per climber while one for Everest cost about $80,000, though the low fee for K2 was in part an attempt by the Pakistani government to attract adventurers in the wake of a number of terrorist incidents in the region.

Acute natural hazards and objective dangers, such as frequent ice avalanches and rockfall, make survival on K2 extremely precarious. Unstable and turbulent weather patterns are yet another deterrent. Impacted heavily by the jet stream airflow thousands of metres above sea level, the mountain has developed a reputation for climatic unpredictability rarely matched in the region. Weather forecasts, so detailed and comprehensive in modern meteorology, have to be taken with a liberal pinch of salt.

A moment of calm on K2’s slopes can transform into a blizzard in minutes, a phenomenon that has put paid — sometimes with fatal consequences — to many attempts on its summit. K2 is over 1,000 kilometres further north than Everest, and consequently prone to lower temperatures and heavier snows.

The dozens of potential routes to the summit, a handful of which are now the most favoured, pose all those hazards and are only for those who are more competent and technically dexterous. But the summit is also only attainable by those who can overcome the crushing effects of high altitude which can render climbers incapable of even the most basic brain and bodily functions. In the Death Zone — the region above 8,000 metres — the bodily organs begin to fail, unable to metabolise or process oxygen as efficiently as required to sustain life.

Whatever its fatality rate, its natural hazards and its unpredictability, for many in the climbing fraternity, K2 is a thing of beauty which captivates them and which they consider the most significant prize in modern-day mountaineering. It is there to be climbed and, for many, a lifelong ambition remains unfulfilled until that challenge is undertaken.

In the 10 years to 2008, the summit had been reached in just five of them, but this proved no deterrent. In the summer of that year, its allure and appeal was no different to that experienced by the Duke of the Abruzzi and the countless others who had come before, some having tasted summit success, others having never returned.

A Nepalese climber named Pemba Gyalje was the first person to set foot at K2’s base in 2008. He will never forget the first time he laid eyes on the mountain:

I was face to face with K2. I felt it was a very steep mountain. It was a single mountain standing out, not like Everest which is surrounded by several other peaks. It did not remind me of anything else — this was just K2. I thought it was very beautiful.

Chapter one

The Waiting Game

28 May - 20 July

As Pemba Gyalje slid the rucksack off his back and onto the rocky ground, he breathed in the crisp air. Since two Kazakhstani climbers had reached K2’s summit the previous autumn, the remote mountain region had lain pristine and untouched. Pemba, a Nepalese climbing Sherpa, was the first person to set foot on the pedestal of the world’s second highest mountain that year. Behind him, applause echoed around the vast expanse.

The expedition leader, Wilco van Rooijen, had just told the 100 porters who had hauled the tons of equipment and supplies across the Baltoro glacier to Base Camp that, instead of being paid for seven days’ work, they would be paid for 10. The porters were overjoyed; they had earned enough money to sustain their families and livelihoods for months. Bedecked in their much-prized special expedition peaked caps, which Wilco had printed up for them as a souvenir, the porters dropped the dozens of barrels and boxes of climbing gear and supplies on the glacial moraine and hurried away, back towards civilisation.

It was 28 May 2008 and Pemba was one of a team of eight supremely-equipped and rigorously-prepared climbers who were the first mountaineering expedition that summer to take up residence on the undulating plateau at the top of the Godwin-Austen glacier beneath the towering K2 — a place which would become their home for the next two and a half months. After weeks of arduous travel by airplane, bus, jeep and on foot, the Dutch K2 International Expedition had finally arrived to the spot where they pitched their tents and temporary auxiliary dwellings on the rock and ice for the weeks that lay ahead.

The eight climbers, including five Dutchmen, an Australian, a Nepali and an Irishman, comprised the members of the expedition which had been in the planning phase for almost two years. After a seven-day trek from the now-distant Askole, they reached a place nearly four kilometres beneath the summit where they set up Base Camp, home each summer to a menagerie of mountaineers from across the globe, compelled to come there by a shared passion and common goal.

It was a place without any precise geographical boundaries, no known address and no specific location on any map but it was the approximate point at which climbers seeking to conquer K2 could set up camp safely, out of the path of the rockfall, avalanches and turbulent weather episodes for which the mountain had gained a reputation.

Pemba and his climbing partners stood at an altitude of just over 5,000 metres above sea level, on a par with Turkey’s Mount Ararat and Amarnath Peak in the Himalaya. The landscape was peppered with manifold boulders and debris, pushed down and aside by the massive glacier as it moved gradually across the valley. It was an inhospitable place, with scant vegetation and animal life, the terrain and environment anathema to the bare essentials and comforts of daily living. On every side of the barren plain, mountains soared towards the skies, none more daunting or impressive in Pemba’s eyes than the highest peak in the Karakorum mountain range.

The silence at K2’s Base Camp was almost deafening, in stark contrast to the ever-bustling Everest Base Camp from where Pemba had launched each of his seven successful summit attempts, one year after another. Often home to up to 1,000 people each climbing season, the encampment below the world’s highest mountain was akin to a small town with people scattered across the plateau; at K2, there was no-one, something which spoke volumes in Pemba’s mind about the mountain’s reputation:

When you see 1,000 people at Everest Base Camp from different countries - huge manpower and good service — you are thinking I want to climb Everest next year. K2 is different — at Base Camp there are minimal people, limited facilities, services, minimal manpower. There are only people who really want to do it.

Pemba paused for breath and surveyed the ground around him. There had been a recent heavy snowfall, its brilliant whiteness reflecting the rays of the afternoon sun. The expedition had the advantage of being the first to reach Base Camp; now they had plenty of potential sites to choose from, but finding a place to establish their temporary homes on what was an active, imperceptibly moving glacier was no easy task.

A minute shift in the moraine in the dead of night could be enough to collapse a tent, knock over barrels of foodstuffs or damage essential gear. Tents would have to be regularly adjusted and sometimes moved to accommodate the creeping, icy juggernaut beneath. Pemba brought his experience of establishing many Base Camps at Everest to bear on his first K2 expedition:

We chose the best camping site. It was the middle part of the major Base Camp area with less objective dangers from avalanches and glaciers, a safe Base Camp. The glacier was active, always changing In many places there was no proper platform for the tent. For the first four days we worked every day, eight to 10 hours, to set up Base Camp. We had to dig out the ice, the snow and rocks for the tents. It was quite heavy construction on a bumpy surface. We used many stones and blocks. It is not easy to set up Base Camp on an active glacier.

Wilco van Rooijen directed operations with panache. The accomplished and ambitious Dutch mountaineer was in great shape after the week-long hike along the Baltoro. The terrain was manageable and acclimatisation to the new environment was under way. His team were bonding well, savouring the experience and relishing the prospect of tackling for the world’s second highest point. He was feeling buoyant, the logistical preparations of the past two years realised, his emotions taut as he observed the landscape:

Humility pride, wonder, fear and bravado all had a place in our cocktail of emotions. What a simply magnificent view. The area immediately around K2 is called the throne room of the mountain gods. It is easy to understand why⁸

With the newly-arrived expedition were five ancillary staff, hired from the valleys of northern Pakistan. Their task was to tend to the team’s eating requirements for the duration of their expedition. They had already started to unpack the essential items required for the first night on the mountain, rifling through rucksacks and barrels for the ingredients of what would be the expedition’s first Base Camp meal.

Also present were a handful of international trekkers who had walked with the expedition from Askole; they were planning to go no further. Treks to K2 Base Camp were common, especially for the less experienced mountaineer intent on enhancing his or her experience; perhaps, next time, they would be settling into a tent at Base Camp, part of an expedition attempting the summit. Soon the climbers and their kitchen personnel were alone, staring at the seemingly endless mounds of climbing essentials piled against the boulders all around them.

The team moved swiftly to establish their miniature village of tents on the ice and rock, all well out of the path of potential avalanches and rockfalls. Everyone had their own tent, most of them orange, the colour reflecting the nationality of the majority of the team. Their thin-skinned domes, adorned with colourful flags and sponsors’ bunting, were imaginatively partitioned into an invisible bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, with hiking gear stowed in one corner, a sleeping bag rolled up in another; the climbers mentally condensing their own homes into their new three by three-metre living quarters.

The expedition was being sponsored by the Dutch activated carbon producer and water purification company, Norit, and in the months and years afterwards, the Norit appendage became the shorthand description for the eight-man troupe. The company’s logo was on almost every piece of clothing and headgear which the team had brought to the mountain. Among the items was a small Norit water purifier which looked like an office water cooler. It became the team’s much-used ‘tap’ at Base Camp.

The toilet tent was pitched a good distance away, its placement so far from camp was a nuisance when required urgently in the cold dead of night, but the distance was essential for hygiene and preventing a contamination of snow which would be melted endlessly over the following weeks to supply drinking water for the climbers. Hydration at this altitude is essential, dehydration being one of the many enemies of a successful ascent. Glacial water supplied a tiny, red shower tent, to which the climbers paid chilly visits, trying to avoid slipping barefoot and partly clothed on the boulders and ice blocks en route.

Beard trims and haircuts were available on occasion from the kitchen personnel but some team members preferred to let their facial hair grow, if only to keep their faces warm. Pemba, a devout Buddhist, located the prayer flags he had brought from Nepal — they were strung between the tents to bring blessings and good luck to the expedition.

A large mess tent with fold-up tables and plastic chairs was used for eating recreation, planning and blogging and became the main hub of activity. Above it, the cooks’ Pakistani flag fluttered alongside the Irish tricolour, which a local tailor in Skardu had made for the Irish climber, Ger McDonnell.

Originally from the Solukhumbu district in north-eastern Nepal — a region synonymous with mountaineering tourism — Pemba Gyalje was on his first expedition to K2. Despite his passion for the mountains and his extensive experience of the Himalaya, many of his climbing friends and relatives were puzzled and concerned when he first announced plans to climb the mountain: they told him it was too dangerous, the death rate on K2 — one out of every four climbers attempting to scale the mountain dies in their effort — was too high, and they wondered why he wanted to risk those odds.

Pemba dismissed their worried queries. He had researched the region and studied any material he could find about K2. There was nothing he had learned about the mountain and its reputation that unduly unnerved him:

Everyone says Killer Mountain and so the history makes people physiologically very uncomfortable. This is actually not really a killer mountain, this is a very beautiful mountain, the same as Everest and other 8,000-metre peaks. If people organise very well and use strong manpower like other 8,000-metre peaks, then the success rate will be high and it will be much safer.

Such confidence and self-belief were among the reasons that Pemba had been asked to join the Dutch expedition. And they were among the many reasons that Pemba’s Irish friend and now team-mate, Ger McDonnell, had asked him to become a member. The two had first met on Everest in 2003 and from the moment they encountered each other, they seemed to bond, like kindred spirits. Ger had long been fascinated by the Sherpa way of life, their humble spirituality and sagacious approach to mountaineering.

He found in Pemba an articulate and exemplary exponent of Sherpa ideals and philosophies. In fact, the Irishman saw something special in him — a steely resilience combined with a pleasant and calming aura. Their experiences together had convinced Ger that Pemba would not just enhance the cohesion of the eight-man expedition to the mountain, he would also improve its chances of success.

Throughout their pre-expedition discussions, Ger was insistent that Pemba -whom he liked to dub ‘Speedy Gonzales’ —would join the team as a fully fledged regular member, with the same status as all the other climbers. He would be neither a mountain guide nor a high-altitude worker, a role the Nepali traditionally played on mountains like Everest and Cho Oyu.

Pemba mulled over his decision for several months. K2 had never beckoned him in the past, his focus was always on the Himalaya of Nepal and Tibet, but now he had an opportunity to explore Everest’s deputy and a region he had never visited before. It would be a wonderful opportunity to visit the Karakorum mountains about which he had heard and read so